Culture & Romance

When the wedding festivities ended, I spent a few more days in Wuhan with Sam & Daisy, then took the train to Shanghai. I feel at home in Shanghai. I spent five days there before flying home. As time permits, I will share later some of those photographs.

This last group of scanned in scrap-book pages are photographs of a few selected pages in a book. My doorbell rang one day. A friend that went to high school with Sam was standing there. He had recently returned from a trip to China and hand delivered me a wedding book. Do not expect these scanned in pages to look like a typical USA wedding album.

So, I’ll be starting school next week. It’s 9 weeks, a couple of refresher courses, and I do have a general idea where this might lead me. I will leave you now, with 2 sentences and 7 scanned in scrap-book pages.

Wherever life takes you, embrace this world with an open mind. By doing so, what you will discover far exceeds your own expectations.

Rain was pouring down non-stop. With multiple vehicles, we were all transported to a restaurant in Wuhan. It was another hour-long ride. Daisy’s aunt was hosting our evening dinner. I think what happened next must have been planned.

I was warmly greeted by her aunt and restaurant staff. Because of the messy rain, I didn’t notice, the other guests were held back a bit in the lobby. They brought me, alone, into this dining room. To say I was treated like royalty, an honored guest, would be an understatement. From past reading, I understood in the historical sense, the mother of a #1 son in China holds a certain level of power, control and respect.

This was a cultural difference I could endorse back, by simply being myself.

Daisy had told me (during her visit here), her parents discouraged her when they learned she wanted to marry someone from the USA. She asked them to wait, they should meet Sam first. The two later traveled together to Wuhan. He met her parents. Sam understands Mandarin, and speaks it. I know my son, I let him be himself, it’s his greatest strength in life.

So on to the scanned in scrap-book pages for this chapter. Sam told me, don’t ask what it is, just eat it first. Glad I took his advice.

I had made an off-hand comment to Sam once “I will be there…..as long as I get to dance with my son at his wedding.” Ball room dancing at weddings, as we know it in the USA, is not traditional in a Chinese wedding. That USA tradition, so important to me, was included in their ceremony.

The parents do play a role in the ceremony. I was limited to 100 scrap-book pages though, I’ll throw some miscellaneous pictures into a post at the end.

It does begin with the dragon dance. I was clueless, had no idea I would walk my son down the aisle.

Daisy is crying as we hug each other. In a later chapter on the wedding ceremony, you will meet Jeff. In front of 300 Chinese guests, he translated for me. My words were simple, “If I had to pick the woman to marry my only son, I would have picked Daisy.”